Inside the Market's roundup of some of today's key analyst actions. This post will be updated with more analyst commentary during the trading day.
Trilogy Energy Corp.'s latest operations update provided several new well results from the Duvernay shale formation that were higher than expected, as well as on plant outages and turnarounds that kept a significant portion of production off-line, Raymond James analyst Luc Mageau said.
"Although we knew plant turnarounds would impact third-quarter production, we did not forecast it to be this much," he wrote in a research note titled Super Duper Duvernay – and Some Plant Turnarounds Too . "However, new Duvernay results are extremely encouraging and, with several more expected before year-end, this release is net positive. We continue to believe that Trilogy offers excellent exposure to the Duvernay, and at its current valuation, investors do not have to pay for it."
Target : Mr. Mageau rates the stock "outperform" and has a $34 price target.
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Autodesk Inc. management is making all the right moves but it has to be more aggressive in getting customers to pay, said Canaccord Genuity analyst Richard Davis, ahead of the company's October 2 analyst day.
"We really wanted to upgrade ADSK into the firm's analyst day. However, our view is that while management is absolutely taking the correct steps to improve the firm's future execution, the incremental improvement likely to be discussed at the analyst day isn't quite sufficient to offset ongoing (but diminishing) macro headwinds we independently see in the design software space," he wrote in a research note where he compared Autodesk to Adobe Systems Inc.
"We would need to see either a more aggressive move to subscription or additional evidence that an improving macro is nearer. Therefore, we are closer to an upgrade (thus the price target increase on a higher multiple), but not quite there yet."
"The firm, in our opinion, is gently pushing customers to a better place in terms of consuming ADSK software functionality – and we believe this will pay off for both parties."
Target : Mr Davis raised his price target to $42 (U.S.) from $35 and rates the stock "hold."
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Lundin Mining Corp. is nicely on time and on budget for development and construction at its Eagle project, said Desjardins Securities analyst Jackie Przybylowski.
"We continue to expect that ramp-up of operations will begin with initial mining in early 2014, and that commercial production will be achieved in the second quarter of 2015. We anticipate that Lundin will spend $450-million on development, slightly higher than the company's $400-million estimate."
Target : Ms. Przybylowski rates the stock "buy" and has a $5.50 (Canadian) price target.
Sonali Verma